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hamburger buns

hamburger buns

I was in a search for the perfect hamburger bun for a long time. When I say "perfect", I mean perfect for my personal taste. I've tried Peter Reinhart recipe from BBA, I've tried different recipes form diferrent sites, I've tried Tangzhong method, all with wonderful results... but not perfect. Recently, I took hamelman's ingredients from page 258 (soft butter rolls) and Susan's pate-fermentee method link here , followed by these modifications: I've decreased the quantity of yeast, taking as refference the quantity given by susan, and I adapted for my quantity of flour, I've used milk instead of water, and remove the dry milk from the ingredients list and I did not used steam when baking. The buns came almost close to perfection. Next step is to use sourdough instead of old dough, but I'm not sure about how to substitute one to another (the old dough can be replaced using the same quantity and hydration by sourdough?? -can it be that simple??)

More pictures and complete recipe (written in romanian, but translator available on the sidebar, although, the automatic translation it's kind of funny) can be found here Apa.Faina.Sare

Comments

What a lovely soft white crumb you have in those buns, and some glaze on the crust!

Regarding use of sourdough as the pre-ferment I could offer this advice.

You can substitute directly, in terms of hydration and quantity as you suggest...so long as your sour is not over-ripe, or, over sour. It should really still be in good condition.

My major concern that you would need to address is the difference in leavening power between the pate fermentee and the leaven. I should qualify that: I mean the sour will work much more slowly.

I'm not really sure that will be ideal when making an enriched dough. What you could do to overcome this is to look at your yeast level in the final dough. I would be inclined to think about increasing it, although I haven't, as yet looked over your formula on the blog. I will do that shortly.

Andy, I modified the text, adding this phrase : "I've decreased the quantity of yeast, taking as refference the quantity given by susan, and I adapted it for my quantity of flour".

I'll try to explain what is tangzhong method, and I hope I can make myself understood, words in english comes rather difficult for me.

tangzhong (I'm not sure if is originated from Japan or China), is a flour paste, made by 1 part flour and 5 parts water, cooked (stirring with a spatula) till it reaches 65°C. When is cool, it's chilled in the fridge for a few hours, and then is ready to be incorporated in the dough, in an amount required by the recipe. It's role is to soften the crumb and to keep it fresh for several days. So they say! I didn't notice much difference from other buns recipe that didn't require tangzhong.

Writing this, I kept asking myself: how comes that Andy did not know what tangzhong is??? Is that possible for him to not know everything about doughs?? And than it hits me: tangzhong is also known by the name "water roux". Mistery solved, and probably Andy knows in fact, everything. :)

Codruta

ps: if you take a look at my formula for buns, please let me know if I did something wrong.

Your yeast level is low, but if you are happy with the results, then my advice is to stick with it.

I only use fresh yeast, as I have ready access to it in College. At home, I only ever bake with natural leaven as my wife does not cope well with regular bread yeasts, and we both much prefer sourdough breads anyway.

But, to illustrate using your formula, I would use fresh yeast at 1% in the pre-ferment, and 3% in the final dough, giving 4% in total on flour. This would probably equate to 1.5% Instant yeast, where your formula uses 0.88%.

As I said, stick with the 0.88% if you use pate fermentee, but I would advise you to increase the yeast in the final dough to nearer that 1.5% mark if you use a natural leaven as the pre-ferment instead.

Many thanks for expanding on tangzhong. I was really asking for the benefit of others, and your explanation is very good. Don't question your English too much; I was sure you would provide an answer which everyone here can understand.

Yes, I am familiar with "water roux", as posted on TFL. I have used the concept many times on a commercial basis, but we always referred to it either as a "boil-up" [English], or used the Russian term "zavarka". We used it as a portion of the dough in the Pane Toscano, which we made using our French leaven plus flour and water, and, of course, no salt! Personal thought here, lovely chewy texture, shame about the lack of taste.

The other form of use had rather drifted by the wayside when I first became involved with the Village Bakery, Melmerby [Cumbria, UK] where we made lots of Russian breads using rye sourdoughs. When refreshing the sour, the first step was to mix the flour with boiling water. We then cooled this mass before adding it to the leftover sourdough acting as the seed.

The purpose is to gelatinise the starch. Boiling water cooks the flour, causing the starch molecules to burst open and take up lots of the water, thereby expanding greatly; hence the thickening effect achieved when cooking a sauce.

The effect on the bread is to retain better moisture as the starches have taken up so much extra water in the first place. But, that chewy texture is achieved because the cooking of the flour de-natures the protein, so the gluten in that portion is really broken down.

It's a great technique, and I really like using it. But I hated carrying large pans of boiling water around in a really busy bakery; that was quite dangerous to me!

Hello codruta,Very lovely hamburger buns!I've used the water roux method twice now and really like the effect this method has on the crumb. The crumb on your hamburger buns, along with the crust color and sesame topping, looks wonderful!Your hamburger buns remind me of Sylvia's, also made with an enriched dough. I include the link here in case her formula interests you:http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17329/buns-sandwiches:^) from breadsong

FF, I did not use egg wash or glaze at all! and that is because of two reasons:

1. My oven is moody, and it doesn't like to be set on a low temperature; it works fine on high temperatures ( fortunatelly, that is good for hearth breads), but if I try to decrease the temperature, I risk to turn it off. So, sweet breads, buns or rolls are not something I can do with great success :( and the cheesecake cracks every time. :(( If I use egg wash, I only risk to burn the surface of the bread.

2. If i don't have an egg white available (for example if I make mayonnaise with the yolk the same day) I rather not use any, than to waste a good farm egg (especially for an unpredictible result).

I just followed susan's instructions: I prepared a wet towel, and a plate with sesame seeds. I took a ball, roll it on the wet towel, then in sesame seeds, slowly pressing into a disk, with the palm of my hand. I let the balls proof, and then I baked them. I was afraid that the sesame seeds wont stick, but they did. I consider this method a winner, at least for buns and rolls. I don't think that a big loaf or challah can be handle the same way.

After baking, while still hot, I took a piece of butter and scrub it gently on the top of the buns.

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